


Dear Doctor Selvig...

by Numina



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Loki is sorry-not-sorry, Odin's A+ Parenting, Other, POV Loki (Marvel), Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-03-20
Packaged: 2019-04-05 01:47:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14033499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Numina/pseuds/Numina
Summary: While the refugees of Asgard work at making a home on earth, Loki sits down to write an impossible letter of apology at his brother's request.(Same Thanos-is-biding-his-time headcanon as my other Marvel stuff)





	Dear Doctor Selvig...

Thor had a way of asking.

He would ask, and Loki would say no. Then it was on to variations of pretty-please soaked in violet mead and topped with peeled grapes and golden apple slices until Loki was properly irritated. Then simply, “Why not?”

That ripcord yanked, the tightly wadded truth would mushroom out of his mouth before his silver tongue could soften it. He’d unload exactly what he thought of Thor’s stupid plan, selfish wants, or already incalculable debt. Thor would listen and stroke his sandy beard as soberly as if he hadn’t provoked the frothing conniption, and Loki would bolt a towering edifice of clarion, jagged-edged rejection into the ground at Thor’s feet with the crushing finality of death itself. Then a few seconds of crystalline silence. Then, like thunder following lightning, Thor’s answer would still shake him despite clear forewarning and the patterns of antiquity.

His twinkling eyes would meet Loki’s very briefly, and he’d say, “Still…” and walk away, leaving Loki in peace to let the meaningless retort eat at him. Loki couldn’t remember the first time Thor had flicked an irrational desire to please him into his perpetually spinning mind, to recur and recur until he wore himself down. But it always worked, even with just one twinkling eye, apparently.

So Loki was writing a letter.

_Dear Doctor Selvig,_

The crushed parchment flew across the room about half as fast as the mild-mannered astrophysicist would if he’d heard Loki speak the words. It was futile. It was worse than futile, it was cruel. Selvig wanted knowledge of Loki’s survival about as warmly as Loki wanted a chance to chat with The Other again. “Dear Doctor Selvig,” he muttered to the dark wood of the desk in his most evocatively villainous tone, “so sorry about that time I sent you screaming to the sanitarium. I do hope that your home planet will be large enough for the two of us, all the same.” His satyric facade cracked and he buried his face in his hands.

Thor was such a lackbrained prat sometimes. He’d want him writing to Barton next. Hel, that would be even worse. At least he hadn’t made Selvig kill his own colleagues. And after that, then what? One for each and every survivor of his ill-composed little psychotic fugue? How many people could there really have been in Manhattan that day?

Loki hung his head, silver tongue heavy in his mouth, black quill heavy in his hand. There weren’t any words.

 _Patience,_ Frigga’s voice soothed from his memory, _it will come. In time._   
  
_Dear Dr. Selvig,_

 _I know that both personal experience and venerable myth tell you that I’m about as trustworthy as a hyena with a babysitting license, but I’d like you to know that it was nothing personal. My skin was on the line, so I had to choose between haunting you for the rest of your life or being tortured for the rest of mine, and seeing as my life is likely to be hundreds of times longer than yours, even_ with _constant torture, it only seemed practical to go the way I did. Was it really so bad?_

Yes. Yes it really had been so bad. Thor had shown him the footage of the poor bare-ass bastard getting arrested. It was lucky he’d stopped at his skin. A mortal trying to shake off the residue of a god wearing too many mantles might have tried anything to make the voices and the textures stop. He’d wanted to claw his own skin off, most days, and he’d been accustomed to it.

_Dear Dr. Selvig,_

_Do you even realize how much worse it could have been? Really I think a little gratitude is in order._

“Fuck,” he spat after the wadded missive, “I really do sound like him.”

He stood up abruptly to pace, kicking the chair over when it failed to fall over on its own, pondering what he would do if this were just some attempt by Thor to wheedle his way back into Jane Foster’s life. He shook his head, imagining Thor trying to write _that_ letter. “Dear Jane,” he smirked, dropping his voice to his brother’s expansive boom, “I’m living in Oklahoma now, so we’re practically neighbors. I’m also still extremely pretty if that makes you want to forgive my being a complete waste of your scarce time and prodigious intellect.”

It would be just like him, Loki thought, to invite Jane to try again when he’d already got women stalking him at every corner. Maybe that was why the two of them made such durable siblings, in spite of everything. Loki was all mouth, Thor was all appetite.

Frigga clucked disapprovingly at the back of his mind, _Why must you always make such unfair comparisons?_ but Loki only scoffed at the shoddy delusion. For all that she had taught him about being a shameless shill for her family, “sacrifice” or what have you, Frigga would have known better than to chide him about fairness.

_Dear Dr. Selvig,_

_You need to get over what happened. We all do things we don’t want to do when it’s the world at stake. How much worse would it have been if I’d grabbed someone without your moral center? Fairness is for children, and not especially lovable children, either, just the whiny, sticky, crybaby kind. If it makes you feel any better, think of it as a test, and be grateful that passing was an option. That’s not always a given in my family. I’m not sorry. Because I was RIGHT. I’m not sorry for botching Thor’s test and getting him dumped into your life in the first place, either, because you did for him what I couldn’t and my father wouldn’t and my mother didn’t. I still don’t understand what it was, but you and your foster daughters made him capable of being happy. And even half out of my blithering mind, consumed by a rage that was never mine, I recognized you, and I knew I needed your help just as much. So I did what I did. And you broke, a little. It happens to the best of us. And I’m not sorry. But I’m grateful._

Loki blew his nose on that one before sending it after the others. “P.S.” he snarled, “I’ll need you to keep all this a secret from your buddy Thor a lot longer than the seven seconds it will take for you to call him in a paper-bag-huffing panic and read it to him aloud for verification.” He wiped some moisture from his cheeks with the underside of his fist before thumping the desktop in frustration.

It was a test, of course. Growing up like they had, he and Thor hadn’t really learned any other language for affection. Everything was either a bombastic gambit for show or a subtle play for proof. Given a thousand years, one could still construct something resembling intimacy from those two gestures in sufficient abundance.

Thor’s tests had still been pretty straightforward, at their core. _Do you still love me? Fight me for “yes”. Ignore me for “no”._

That had changed after Selvig. After Jane. After he’d conceived of a world without Odin in it, without any hope or threat of a throne. After he’d found a life worth living and a family worth giving it for. Not just valiantly risking it, but fully and humbly giving it. His sense of the world had grown enormously more complex and open, and with it the methods he used to try to sound out others.

What the fuck was he being tested for with this task? Just whether he meant to conduct himself with a smidgen of humility and grace in the mortal world? If he neglected to do it, would Thor ever bring it up again, or just quietly mark him down? Thor would forget. There was just too much to do, too much to manage, to quibble over peripheral portents of whether they could afford to trust each other. They couldn’t afford not to. He would see that soon enough.

_Still…_

Loki groaned. There wasn’t enough parchment left anyway.  
  
_Still…_

It was crueler to pursue this than to let it lie.

_Still…_

“It’s too late,” he whispered to the blank page, “Nothing fixes what I’ve done. It’s still going to end the way it’s always had to.”

He sat in silence, inside and out. Things that don’t matter happen so much more easily.

_Dear Doctor Selvig,_

_I have settled on this as the least shocking way you might hear of me again. To the surprise and disappointment of many, I do yet live. For this and only this, I apologize._

_For the rest, I offer my bond in peace as a guest taking refuge in your realm, and a weregild commensurate with the rates of your ancestors. Two hundred soldi, times three for injury done to a man doing duty for his king, works out to roughly five and a half pounds of pure gold, included with this letter in the form of various coins and trinkets. If you would dispute this amount please take it up with my brother, the king of Asgard, your friend. He will hear you fairly. This matter past, I am resolved to keep my distance from you at all times and in all things._

_Respectfully,_

_Loki of Asgard_

**Author's Note:**

> Do I believe Loki was a tortured protagonist in the grips of some pretty serious free-will-violating forces during The Avengers?
> 
> Well...all other evidence aside, it was written by Joss Whedon. Besides magical ass-kicking waifs that's just about his favorite character.


End file.
